(2017-12-12, 09:47 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]So a MAL would consciously concentrate useful molecules? Is that what you are saying?
I have to say, for one who is beamoaning the lack of a detailed mechanism from Paul (despite his links) you (and others) are very cagey over those details.
It is quite 'interesting' that with a straight face they are willing to propose a creature whose like has never been seen - one whose interests are wholly aligned with ours, with both all-encompassing and sub-microscopic vision and reach, and with exquisite presentience - but find the idea of pre-life isolation of chemical processes too ridiculous to conceive.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-warm-g...-20160317/
https://www.nature.com/articles/317792a0
"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.
Linda
DaveB Wrote:The problem with that, is that saying "we don't know the answer yet", can simply be a way of postponing indefinitely the conclusion that natural processes would not produce life from non-life.
So you have this same objection to all unanswered questions in science, right?
Quote:There was great optimism after the Urey Millar experiment that the origin of life might be a relatively simple problem, This was partly because far less of the actual complexity of living cells had been realised back then. Since that time, there has been an exponential decay in that optimism, but very little of that ever gets passed on to the general public - lest they begin to wonder if life really did start by accident. James Tour's biggest 'sin' is perhaps, that he spelled out the size of the problem to a larger audience.
I think you're being too pessimistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%...ed_studies
Quote:His video points out the sheer improbability that random (I note your objection but randomness doesn't have to mean all probabilities are equal) chemistry will produce anything useful because of its complexity.
It's not just (nonuniform) randomness.
Quote:Yes, if you had a gadget that could pull out a handful of molecules from the resultant sludge, based on some deliberate intention to create something (which would itself imply intelligence) things might be different. Indeed, J. Scott Turner, points out that the opposite is really true - before life - before cells - diffusion processes would tend to dissipate any tiny concentrations of 'useful' molecules that did develop.
So we agree that there probably had to be some sort of proto-membrane.
~~ Paul
(2017-12-12, 01:02 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]It is quite 'interesting' that with a straight face they are willing to propose a creature whose like has never been seen - one whose interests are wholly aligned with ours, with both all-encompassing and sub-microscopic vision and reach, and with exquisite presentience - but find the idea of pre-life isolation of chemical processes too ridiculous to conceive.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-warm-g...-20160317/
https://www.nature.com/articles/317792a0
"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.
Linda
First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203
Quote:In a hypothetical RNA world that may have predated the DNA protein world, RNA is posited to serve a dual role as both enzyme and genetic transmitter. If a few ribozymes are regarded as precursors to all life, one could attempt to make an estimate of the probability of the assembly of a simple ribozyme composed of 300 bases, as is done on page 216 of the book. This probability turns out to be 1 in 4^300, which is equivalent to 1 in 10^180, which, as Deamer admits, can hardly be supposed to happen even once in the entire 13.7-billion-year history of the universe.
Deamer describes his ambitious laboratory setup to attempt a simulation of the origin of life by making trillions of half-micron-size cellular compartments by adding water to dry lipids in a flask. To this, he adds a solution of small peptides and nucleic acids in the hope that, among the trillion or so cellular compartments and a vast array of biological monomer combinations, a proto-living system will be found. The failure to witness any trend whatsoever toward the emergence of a living system is attributed to the infinitesimal scale of the laboratory system when it is compared with the terrestrial setting in which life is thought to have arisen. Yet, if we move from the laboratory flask to the oceans of the Earth, we gain in volume only a factor of about 10^20, and in time, from weeks in the laboratory to half a billion years, the gain is an additional factor of 10^10. In the probability calculation for the single ribozyme, we therefore gain a factor of 10^30 in all, which reduces the improbability factor given by Deamer from 1 in 10^180 to 1 in 10^150.
On this basis, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the emergence of the first evolvable cellular life form was a unique event in the cosmos. If this did indeed happen on Earth for the first time, it must be regarded as a near-miraculous event that could not be repeated elsewhere, let alone in any laboratory simulation of the process.
"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.
(2017-12-12, 09:07 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203
"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.
A
post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe.
Quote:Instead Koonin ingeniously proposes that at least one of these hypotheses, maybe the RNA world one, is actually quite probable (maybe inevitable), if the cosmological model of eternal inflation and an infinite multiverse is the truth. With the eternal inflation hypothesis, all macroscopic histories permitted by laws of physics are repeated an infinite number of times in an infinite multiverse. In other words, Koonin invokes the anthropic selection principle in an infinite multiverse to explain the origin of life itself. He believes that the reason why we see life evolve in this universe is because, if there are an infinite number of universes, then no matter how beyond vanishingly improbable it is in any one universe, at least some of these universes will spontaneously by chance evolve life eventually able to reason about the evolution of life.
So Koonin admits that the odds of life evolving are vanishingly small. He then invokes an infinite multiverse of different universes to explain it.
Of course such multiverse concepts are basically unscientific, unverifiable, unfalsifiable and against the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony. A last resort materialist approach to dealing with some rather intractable problems, like the origin of life.
(2017-12-12, 10:41 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]A post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe.
Yes, there's no argument against infinite possibilities - that's why they like it so much. Abiogenesis: Multiverse - no problem. Fine tuning: Multiverse - no problem. Quantum weirdness: Many Worlds - no problem. No evidence - no problem.
(2017-12-12, 09:07 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203
"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.
Well, he was just putting in a plug for his pet theory - panspermia - as a way to increase the theatre over which this supposed event occurred. Include a universe of worlds in that calculation and it starts to become inevitable.
No mention by him of "this makes entirely fictional characters likely", though.
Linda
Kamarling Wrote:First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203
So perhaps we can infer from this that the model that Deamer tested is not the correct one.
~~ Paul
(2017-12-12, 10:41 PM)nbtruthma Wrote: [ -> ]A post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe.
Here is Moran's take on some of Koonin's ideas. No insults are thrown.
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/eug...-bang.html
~~ Paul
(2017-12-12, 10:51 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, there's no argument against infinite possibilities - that's why they like it so much. Abiogenesis: Multiverse - no problem. Fine tuning: Multiverse - no problem. Quantum weirdness: Many Worlds - no problem. No evidence - no problem.
Except, of course, that scientists are working to find evidence for these things. And when that search is not fruitful (e.g., M-theory), then other scientists laugh at them.
~~ Paul